Background

Lloyd Vernon Briggs was born on August 13, 1863 in Boston, Massachussets, the youngest of three children and only son of Lloyd Briggs, a stockbroker, and Sarah Elizabeth Elmes (Kent) Briggs.

He was descended from settlers of the Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies. Both his paternal and maternal grandfathers were well-known shipbuilders, and Briggs always retained close ties with the ancestral shipbuilding town of Hanover, Massachussets, on the North River.

Education

He attended Hanover Academy, the Boston Latin School, and Chauncy Hall School in Boston and at the age of fifteen passed the entrance examinations for the Harvard Medical School. Refused matriculation because of his youth, he secured admission to the lectures through the influence of his physician, Henry I. Bowditch.

When his health permitted, Briggs attempted to complete his medical training, attending both Tufts and Dartmouth for one year; he finally received his M. D. degree from the Medical College of Virginia in 1899.

Career

Two years later, having contracted tuberculosis, Briggs left school for a voyage to the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands. Upon his arrival in Honolulu in December 1880, he encountered a smallpox epidemic, qualified as vaccinating officer for the board of health, and inoculated more than a thousand persons in the first three weeks of January.

Briggs returned to Boston to practice psychiatry and became associated with Channing's Brookline sanatorium, but he was soon at odds with his colleague over "irregularities" there. He spent the next five years in private practice and as physician to the mental department of the Boston Dispensary. In 1905 he left for Europe, where he studied insanity under Emil Kraepelin in Vienna and under Carl Jung in Switzerland. After returning to Boston in 1906, Briggs, who had independent means, devoted the rest of his life to improving the treatment of the insane and the delinquent.

His vigorous advocacy of state responsibility for maintaining scientific and humanitarian standards within both public and private institutions brought him into conflict with some physicians, and in the period 1910-13 he attracted wide notice.

In 1911 and 1912 he was nominated by the governor of Massachusetts for membership on the State Board of Insanity, but failed to win confirmation from the governor's council (an elective body). His opponents, accusing him of political scheming, denied his charges of abuses in the commitment of patients, of excessive use of physical restraints, and of inadequate nursing and medical services. Supported by a large number of prominent physicians, Briggs was elected chief of the medical staff of the Boston Dispensary in 1913, and shortly thereafter was seated on the State Board of Insanity. The Board was reorganized in 1914 as a three-man paid commission and, under laws previously enacted, exercised more rigorous supervision of all institutions for the insane.

As secretary to the Board, Briggs consulted such international authorities as Adolf Meyer, who had earlier been pathologist at the Worcester (Massachussets) State Hospital. New procedures were instituted: the hospitals were opened regularly to the families and friends of patients; outpatient departments were established to provide aftercare; steps were taken to ensure that hospital medical supervisors assumed responsibility for treatment and restraint; better food, more adequately trained attendants, and better working conditions for attendants were provided; and occupational therapy and social work were introduced.

Briggs believed that mental illness must be studied in the same scientific manner as physical disease, and he urged the appointment of research pathologists at each institution.

Considered a pioneering model of enlightened penal reform, the "Briggs Law" was copied in other states. Meanwhile, in 1917, Briggs had given up his practice for army service in World War I. At Camp Devens, Massachussets, he organized psychiatric screening procedures for army inductees. While stationed in France the next year as a major in the American Expeditionary Forces, he established neuropsychiatric services for victims of shell shock.

He retained a reserve commission as lieutenant colonel after the war, serving as consultant to the army and to the Veterans' Bureau.

His last published work, which appeared two months before his death, was an argument against capital punishment as a deterrent to crime.

Briggs did not resume private practice after the war, but he maintained a heavy schedule, working from early morning until past midnight, although he suffered from angina pectoris in his later years. A recurrence of tuberculosis caused him to return to the United States, and over the next twelve years he lived for a time in California, worked intermittently for his father and as a bank clerk.

Briggs died at the age of seventy-seven of a coronary thrombosis while spending the winter in Tucson, Ariz. A lifelong Episcopalian, he was buried in the family plot at Hanover Center, Massachussets.

Achievements

• Lloyd Briggs' efforts led to the establishment, in 1912, of the Boston Psychopathic Hospital and to the creation, in 1916, of a state Department of Mental Diseases, directed by a full-time professional psychiatrist. This later became the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, with a Division of Mental Hygiene. A voluminous writer, he produced a number of privately printed volumes dealing with his youthful travel experiences and with family history and genealogy, as well as books concerned with mental illness, such as The Manner of Man That Kills (1921) and History of the Boston Psychopathic Hospital (1922). He served on the National Committee on Prisons and Prison Reform and was a member of numerous professional organizations, including the American Psychiatric Association, the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, and the New England Society of Psychiatry (president, 1935).

Works

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  • Victory for Progress in Mental Medicine; Defeat of Reactionaries, the History of an Intrigue...

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • History and Records of the First Congregational Church, Hanover, Mass., 1727-1865, and Inscriptions From the Headstones and Tombs in the Cemetery at ... Church and Cemetery Records of Hanover, Mass

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • The Manner of Man That Kills: Spencer--Czolgosz--Richeson

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • The Church and Cemetery Records of Hanover, Mass, Volume 1

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • History of shipbuilding on North river, Plymouth county, Massachusetts, with genealogies of the shipbuilders, and accounts of the industries upon its tributaries. 1640 to 1872

    (History of shipbuilding on North river, Plymouth county, ...)

  • Genealogies of the Different Families Bearing the Name of Kent in the United States: Together With Their Possible English Ancestry, A.D. 1295-1898

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • The Manner of Man that Kills: Spencer-Czolgosz-Richeson

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • Genealogies Of The Different Families Bearing The Name Of Kent In The United States: Together With Their Possible English Ancestry, 1295-1898 (1898)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

  • History Of Shipbuilding On North River, Plymouth County, Massachusetts: With Genealogies Of The Shipbuilders, And Accounts Of The Industries Upon Its Tributaries, 1640-1872 (1889)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

  • History of the Psychopathic Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts... - Primary Source Edition

    ( This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923....)

  • The Manner of Man That Kills: Spencer--Czolgosz--Richeson 1921

    (Originally published in 1921. This volume from the Cornel...)

  • History and records of the First Congregational church, Hanover, Mass. , 1727-1865, and inscriptions from the headstones and tombs in the cemetery at Centre Hanover, Mass. , 1727-1894. Being volume I of the church and cemetery records of Hanover, Mass

    (Lang:- eng, Pages 370. Reprinted in 2015 with the help of...)

  • Around Cape Horn to Honolulu on the bark "Amy Turnst", 1889
  • ***RE-PRINT*** History of shipbuilding on North River, Plymouth County, Massachusetts

Views

Briggs sponsored the Massachusetts law, passed in 1921, which required a psychological evaluation, before court trial, of persons indicted for capital crimes; the burden of assessing the mental responsibility of the accused was placed with the Department of Mental Diseases.

Membership

He was a member of the American Psychiatric Association, and of the New England Society of Psychiatry (president, 1935).

Personality

Often engaged in public debate, Briggs had sharp critics and staunch friends in Boston's political, medical, and academic circles. His friends warmly remembered his slight, goateed figure as he testified at legislative hearings or presided over the hospitable dinner table at his Beacon Street home.

Connections

On June 1, 1905, Briggs had married Mary Tileston Cabot. Their only child was Lloyd Cabot.

Father:

Lloyd Briggs

stockbroker

Mother:

Sarah Elizabeth Elmes (Kent) Briggs

Wife:

Mary Tileston Cabot Briggs

1871–1954

Partner:

Walter Channing

Son :

Lloyd Cabot Briggs

1909–1975

References

• Two years' service on the reorganized State Board of Insanity in Massachusetts (Historical issues in mental health)
• Occupation as a substitute for restraint in the treatment of the mentally ill;: A history of the passage of two bills through the Massachusetts ... and social policy: the American experience)
• Experiences of a Medical Student in Honolulu, and on the Island of Oahu 1881
• Who Was Who in America: Volume I 1897-1942